Title: self portrait
Size: 36 in x 36 in Medium: Oil paint Completed: Exhibition Text This artwork was not just me depicting an extreme version of self sabotage, it was also me showing my learning process of using oil paints for the first time. I put much emotion into this piece but not because of the meaning, because of how new all of my materials were to me. Overall, I love this piece because it has many strengths and weaknesses that are apparent to the audience. |
Artist Inspiration
Artist in focus: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
Caravaggio utilizes chiaroscuro which is the contrast between light and dark in this piece "Judith beheading Holofernes". He uses soft, even blending to have skin with no texture since he paints in the baroque style. He also captures this look of no brush stroke through the fabric around the piece. I plan to recreate this texture but input myself as Judith and as Holofernes. The orginal meaning behind this piece was to depict the story of the religious woman, Judith, slaying Holofernes since he was a Assyrian general. The meaning of my piece will be about self sabotage as I will be decapitating myself. |
Planning
I started by taking 4 of the 3 foot panels and connecting the corners together. Once they all felt secure, I took the canvas cloth and laid it on the floor with the wooden square on top of it. I cut out the amount that I needed and wrapped the cloth around the wood and stapled it down with a staple gun. I did this on one side then turned it around and did the opposite side, except for this side, I made sure to secure the fabric a little tighter. I then repeated this process for the next two sides. Once that was done, I flipped the canvas around and saw that there were still some spots on the canvas that had wrinkles or bumps (not what I wanted) so I did some more stapling work to adjust the tightness. Then I took scissors and cut off any extra canvas hanging off the back side. The next step was to gesso the canvas which I started with a thin gesso so I had to keep repeating layers and then waiting for it to dry. I found a much thicker gesso and then I finished the layers and smoothed out the canvas. During this time my canvas go a little too tight and I needed to lay it flat on the ground to straighten the panels.
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I made my reference photos by first analyzing the original painting by Caravaggio and seeing the positions of each subject. I was not trying to replicate the painting perfectly but I wanted to keep the posing similar. I then took pictures of myself wearing a red dress I had. I thought this was going to be the easiest process but it was difficult to figure out how my pose looked compared to the other version of me posing since I could not see the final edited product. I adjusted the lighting during the middle of my photo shoot since there was not contrast of the highlights to the shadows. I had an overhead light on and then I took a led lamp and positioned it so it faced directly on me.
Once I had all of my photos taken and selected, I went on to Photopea (a digital editing application) and copied both photos to the website. Then I used the "select" function to crop out the subject I wanted. I did this on both of my pictures to crop out any background. This part was fairly easily since the background of my bedroom is bright green so I could make the lines neat enough around the subject. Once that was finished, I copied both cutouts of myself into the same project and started playing around with the distance and size of both subjects.
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I had to find a sword off of internet photos since I do not have one. Then I cut out the background of the sword image using the same functions as before and then I copied that to the combined project. I had to make the sword look like I was actually holding it so I aligned it with my hand. Then I added the fabric from Caravaggio's orginal piece from the background but the original is red and I thought I already had to much red so I altered the color to a muted brown using the color adjustment tools on Photopea.
Then I graphed my canvas with 36 squares by 36 squares with each square being 1 inch. I used my graphed reference photo to guide my sketch and sketched the outlines of each subject and put circles around the shadows and highlights. I tried to make the graphite light so it would not pick up the paint but I had to make sure the sketch was still visible. I would erase the sketch and the grid lines when I started so if the paint was too thin it was not visible.
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Process
I started on painting the dress first and I took red paint and made a variety of different shades of red. I mixed red and black together to start painting the shadows of the fabric folds of the dress. I started with working with the darkest shades first that way it was easier to make the lighter shades by just adding more white or red. I did not blend anything at first since I wanted to just lay colors down and blend later.
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I continued to add to the bottom of the dress but since there are less folds, I used bigger sections of color. This time I only had to blend into the highlights vertically and kept the brushstrokes vertical as well since so it was as smooth as possible. I then started the top part of the dress. The reason I did not start the top part of the dress when I was working on the bottom part is because the top was a slightly different color. The folds were not as big as the ones on the bottom so I had to use a smaller brush to keep the dark shadows un-blended. In order to make the shape of the chest, I had lighter red on the top and blended dark red on the bottom side.
Then I started the dress on the second body since that dress was in different lighting and had a brighter shade. I started with the dark shades and did not blend anything. Then I added brighter red but instead of just adding red to the already black color, I added a little white with a base of red. That gave a pinkish color which looked a little too bright at first but against the shadows it made sense. I started by not blending the highlights because the folds are more distinct. The only part that I blended was the top since there was a lot of highlight that slowly worked down to shadow.
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This was both dresses completed and it is visible in the photo how the one on the left has much more straight red color compared to the right dress which is muted. This was because the angle of my body compared to the light source was different since I was actually on the floor for the left subject and the right pose I was turned away from the light.
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I started the skin tone on the right first and I have a lot of red undertones so I mixed red, yellow, and a lot of white. I originally made an orange/peach color for skin which was too dark but I used that combined with a little bit of black for the elbow shadow. I laid a base layer of the peach mixed with white and then to add form I placed a whiter skin color along the upper edge of the arm. I did the same thing for the other arm except I made the shadows with the base color mixed with red instead of black.
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Once I finished the arms, I added more shadow to the crevice of the inner elbow because I thought it was hard to tell that my arm was bent in the photo. I also added a darker gray to the bottom of the wrist to show that my forearm was twisted to hold the sword. I also started the left hand which I originally made way to dark (shown in photo) because I did not mix enough skin tone into the black. I went back later and softened the gray to be lighter and then I started working on my rings. The rings I was wearing on my left hand were mainly silver with minimal designs so I was able to paint a white band and add pure white color on where the glare picked up on the camera. As for the chest, there was not any form so it was pretty much the same color with very little highlights. I had to make a shadow on the armpit which kept blending with the skin tone which was not my goal. In the end, I was able to get a harsh black line to separate the dress to my arm.
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I started the skin on the second subject and I started on the lower arm since it had a similar color to the first skin tone. Then I started the hand which had a lot of pink shadow around the thumb. I whitened the pink shade and used that for the highlighted back of the hand. The fingers were not as pink and were instead red because of the reflection off of the red dress. I then outlined each finger using a light gray line and waited to complete the rings until later on. I added a shadow around the crevice of the elbow because my arm kind of droops at my side.
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Then I started working on the chest which was a lot pinker than the arm because it is paler than my arm. The pink was so muted in the photo it almost appeared to be purple but it made sense since I was laying down and there was a lot of blood flow to my chest and head. I darkened the purplish hue with black which I used to outline my chest cavity and muscle in my neck. I also started working on the bottom part of my arm which is a light brown with lots of red.
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When I started painting the hand, I used the purplish color from the chest to paint the shadow in the inner hand. For the fingers, I mixed the skin tone with brown and red since my hand is completely covered in shadows. I then used the lighter skin tone and put on the tips of my fingers. I then took an even darker shade of brown to outline the fingers. The ring was pretty easy since it blended into my finger and the rest was white.
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The photo on the left is the middle phase of creating the face which was messy. I laid down the rest of the lighter skin tone with most areas being blended towards the shadows. I added a little bit more purplish tone to the face (shown in the right) so that the face connected to the body. The hardest part was the lips since there were no clear outlines of where my lips started and ended and the nose was difficult because of the angle of the face. The eye on the right is also just black since it is completely covered from the light but I put the general area where my eye is. I waited to do the eyebrow till I started making the hair since it was going to be the same color pallet.
I began making the hair by mixing red and yellow to make a dark orange. Then I mixed the orange with black to get a brown color. I added a lot of black because although my hair is light brown, most of my hair was along the floor away from any lighting. I then made a blonde color for the lighter parts by mixing a little bit of yellow and a lot of white to the brown. My hair curved in random directions in the photo so I tried to make my brushstrokes match the direction of the hair pieces. I also strayed from the reference photo by painting my hair being grabbed with my other hand since I did not have a way of editing that.
Then I painted the hair on the other subject. This hair was not as curved and was more wavy so the colors looked kind of mashed together. I started with darker strands of hair and then added white to slowly build the waves. The roots of my hair are much darker than the rest of my hair so I waited to do that till last. Since the roots are not wavy, I took the dark brown and laid it as a base. During this process, I also took the base layer from the arms and dulled it with black and then started applying it to the face. I added a rosy color to the edge of my cheek and forehead and blended it in towards the center. I then took that skin tone and added gray for the left side of the nose and chin. I waited to do the lips and eyes last since I knew I needed to switch to a more detailed brush.
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This is when I finished the jewelry. I did this last because I did not want the black jewelry string to blend with my skin tone since it is a harsh line. I was wearing a large green necklace in the photo with silver spikes around the circle. The silver blended in with my skin tone so I made sure it was a light color. I tried to make the necklace look 3-dimensional with adding circular highlights at the rounded piece.
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The sword's colors were only black and white since the sword is silver. I started with black and put shadows along the handle around my hand. There was no black on the blade of the swords. Then I put a lot of white to make a soft grey which I covered the rest of the sword with. Then I cleaned up the edges of the sword with a flat brush to create a harsh line between the sword and the dress behind it.
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At first, I tried to make the fabric a light brown which I did not like because it was too similar of a color to my hair right above it. So I went over the fabric and made the color more gray. I started with the black background around the fabric so that I could capture the color in before painting the detail.
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Experimentation
I noticed when I would put a few extra drops of linseed oil into my paint, the paint would become too thin and end up becoming translucent in color. This made the area streaky in color and not give the baroque texture I was hoping to achieve. As I started painting more and more, I got the hang of the perfect amount of oil compared to my amount of paint. Another thing that I had to grow to learn is how the paint would change colors with the added linseed oil. Even when I would add small amounts of oil, the paint seemed to take on a lighter appearance and sometimes I would have to darken the color back to what it looked like before.
I did not think the blending was too hard since I was used to blending with acrylic paint not oil. The paint application was very smooth but the easiest blending happened when there was a little bit of linseed oil in the paint. I would take my two colors of paint with no oil and lay them side by side and then add oil to the lighter color and paint a line over the color transition. I would repeat this process until the colors blended together. Another method I used was just placing both colors together and blending them together pretty horribly. Then I would take a clean brush and smoothen the transition of the harsh brushstrokes so the colors looked cohesive.
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Critique
Similarities:
The composition of the pieces are the same with the standing subject on the right and someone laying down on the right. The action is also the same with one person beheading another. The technique of the bright subjects against the black background is the same as well. Both pieces really show the texture of fabric through shadows and highlights to create folds. |
Differences:
The colors in Caravaggio's subjects clothing are muted and the only colors that stand out are the red and white blouse. This is different in my piece since the dresses in my painting are bright red, and I am also wearing bright jewelry. The facial expression of the person being beheaded is greatly different since in Caravaggio's piece, the man is extremely expressive with a wide mouth and eyes but in my piece, the person being beheaded appear to be already dead. |
Reflection
This piece was difficult for me because I have not used oil paints before. I quickly got the hang of it but there were times I was trying to use the medium more like acrylic which made it hard. I love the outcome of the piece and I really just needed to trust the process. Most of the time when I was painting, the colors did look like they matched the reference photo but I had to remember that I was looking at the colors against a white background instead of the black one from the photo. I kind of rushed the final processes of the painting so I do love the first parts I painted but I slowly decreased in quality. I feel like this painting was a good experience for me because smaller paintings in the future will feel much easier and quicker and I am proud of how I used this painting style for the first time and feel like I can practice this skill again.
ACT Questions
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
My inspiration influenced the whole composition of my piece and that is very visible since the subjects are placed and posed similarly. My inspiration also made my artwork have a darker mood with the black background. I do not love using high concentrations of black in my artwork and without my inspiration, I would have probably not painted the background black.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
Even in times of distress/goriness, the outcome can still be beautiful. Caravaggio shows this when he depicts the horrifying scene of Judith beheading Holofernes and people love looking at it because they can look past the action and admire the beauty and talent behind the work.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
The medium and subjects of an artwork shape how the artwork is viewed by society. Caravaggio used the poor and out-casted as his subjects but the work was not at all related to their story and his medium of oil paint was so important to his style.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
The theme of my inspiration was religion and glory since Judith violently slays Holofernes. Although there are no symbols pointing to religion, the story tells a tale from the Book of Judith. The theme of my artwork was self-sabotage since I was beheading myself.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
Society holds beautiful things to have more value compared to when something does not fit conventional beauty standards. But there are blurred lines about what can be beautiful depending on how it is presented.
My inspiration influenced the whole composition of my piece and that is very visible since the subjects are placed and posed similarly. My inspiration also made my artwork have a darker mood with the black background. I do not love using high concentrations of black in my artwork and without my inspiration, I would have probably not painted the background black.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
Even in times of distress/goriness, the outcome can still be beautiful. Caravaggio shows this when he depicts the horrifying scene of Judith beheading Holofernes and people love looking at it because they can look past the action and admire the beauty and talent behind the work.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
The medium and subjects of an artwork shape how the artwork is viewed by society. Caravaggio used the poor and out-casted as his subjects but the work was not at all related to their story and his medium of oil paint was so important to his style.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
The theme of my inspiration was religion and glory since Judith violently slays Holofernes. Although there are no symbols pointing to religion, the story tells a tale from the Book of Judith. The theme of my artwork was self-sabotage since I was beheading myself.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
Society holds beautiful things to have more value compared to when something does not fit conventional beauty standards. But there are blurred lines about what can be beautiful depending on how it is presented.
MLA Citation
The Art Story. “Caravaggio.” The Art Story, 2018, www.theartstory.org/artist/caravaggio/. Accessed 1 Apr. 2024.
Krieger, Lauren. “Renaissance Painting Techniques.” Editions.covecollective.org, 7 Mar. 2018, editions.covecollective.org/chronologies/renaissance-painting-techniques#:~:text=The%20most%20important%20techniques%20that. Accessed 1 Apr. 2024.
Evans, Gareth. “7 Oil Painting Techniques That Every Artist Should Know.” Ken Bromley Art Supplies, 19 June 2020, www.artsupplies.co.uk/blog/7-oil-painting-techniques-that-every-artist-should-know/. Accessed 1 Apr. 2024.
Krieger, Lauren. “Renaissance Painting Techniques.” Editions.covecollective.org, 7 Mar. 2018, editions.covecollective.org/chronologies/renaissance-painting-techniques#:~:text=The%20most%20important%20techniques%20that. Accessed 1 Apr. 2024.
Evans, Gareth. “7 Oil Painting Techniques That Every Artist Should Know.” Ken Bromley Art Supplies, 19 June 2020, www.artsupplies.co.uk/blog/7-oil-painting-techniques-that-every-artist-should-know/. Accessed 1 Apr. 2024.